I have been asked by a few people how I got so far ahead in points and seem to have huge reserves of resources. There are just a few strategies that really work to make one a formidable player. In the interest of making the game more competitive, I will share some of my secrets with you.

When just starting the game, do all the projects in the research and construction sections first. This is where you will get the basic abilities to advance in the game. Then start building assets that will increase your hourly resource count. This means gold mines, farms, and lumber camps. Do not begin recruiting workers. Contrary to what would, at first glance, seem to be the next logical step, it is actually very detrimental to your progress in the game. Large numbers of workers only raise your score substantially while providing only inconsequential increases in your resource income. Building assets provides a hugely better increase in resources while not raising your score. This prevents you from becoming a target before you have the army to back you. In fact, you will do well to keep just the three workers that you start with, assigning one to each category.(It took me several months to learn this: by that time, I already had too many workers.)

A reasonable goal to shoot for first is an income of a few 100K hourly income of each resource before you start building an army. Then commit half your income to training a defensive army and half to building more assets. There is some disagreement among top players as to the best ratio of various troop numbers. In general, you want to have more militia and infantry than anything else (approximately twice as many). Then comes cavalry, swordsmen, pikemen, spearmen, archers and longbowmen. Some folks train equal numbers of these last categories while others train more cavalry and swordsmen. In my experience, knights are not cost effective. Slavers are also not cost effective. Don't forget about building guard towers for defense. These can be very effective.

You can run spy missions to compare your troop levels with those of your opponents. When you think you have an acceptable defensive army, switch that portion of your income to building an offensive army. (For purposes of self defense, it is advisable to leave all troops in the home army until you are preparing to attack. Then transfer your offensive army or armies out of home army.) When building an offensive army, you will want to add trebuchets and battering rams to your troop roster.

You should still be committing half your resources to continuing to build assets. At first, numbers of troops and assets both will seem to be increasing very slowly: be patient, the increases will build momentum after a while. Just stick with it and keep plugging along. Let me reiterate, be patient. That is perhaps one of the harder things to do, but if you just keep at it, you will eventually have a tremendous advantage over others. Good Luck.